Gaming Rage

I am about to date myself:

I miss Super Mario Brothers.

By which, I mean I miss the simplicity of plugging in a game cartridge, turning on the machine, and playing.  Period.  Pretty well as simple as flipping the “On” switch.

Over the years I played all the NES systems up through Wii.  I had a brief flirtation with a racing game on Xbox (I LOVE me some drift).  And in the year after I got out of grad school, I played the crap out of some World of Warcraft.  Can I just say that beating stuff up is incredibly cathartic.

I wouldn’t call myself a gamer, as I haven’t played much of anything in the last six years, but I’m not a total neophyte.  As I have been trying to make a little more time to play (not necessarily games, but just do stuff that isn’t WORK) this year, Susan finally talked me into buying Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition, which was on sale at Gamestop a week or so ago for $5.99.  My inner bargain queen was quite satisfied.

I haven’t actually played it yet.

First I had to download the GameStop app thing.  Then apparently I had to download the Origin app.  From THERE, I had to download the actual GAME (which I had to come up to the office to do because with our craptastic internet, it would’ve taken 3 days).  Fine, great.  Do that.  So, last night I sit down to finally start a game, as I had an hour or so before bed.  Well then 45 minutes of that was taken up by an update to the Origin app (:grumble grumble: crappy internet :grumble grumble:).  So I figure, okay, I can at least create my friggin’ character.

Except, no, I’m getting some kind of message that there’s a whole bunch of content that hasn’t been authorized and I’m supposed to log in something or other.  I was already logged in to my origin account, so was I supposed to have access to this stuff based on what I bought?  Hell if I know.  There were no instructions.  And let’s not even talk about how playing NOT in fullscreen mode (so you can try to Google for instructions on WTH you’re doing wrong) isn’t even possible because the stupid Windows taskbar covers up the relevant buttons for saving and accepting any changes or logging into anything.

I did finally get that fixed this morning back to full screen.

Go look in the GameStop app where there had been 2 things downloaded.  One the game, the other…IDK what it was, but something about a redemption code, which I was supposed to redeem inside the game.  Okay fine. Copy that, go into the game, dig around until I find a place to do that, which opens ANOTHER browser window, makes me create a BioWare account, and finally I find a place to enter a code.  Click that.  Code redeemed!  And it doesn’t recognize it as being for anything.

So I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.  I don’t consider myself a stupid person but this is ridiculous.

And why does every blessed thing have to be connected to the internet?  Why can’t I just turn it on and PLAY THE FREAKING GAME?

Gamestop tech support, I am coming for you and you better have some kind of answer that you manage to deliver without implying that I am a moron.  Because I really hate that shit and I’ve already dealt with one tech support department this week who didn’t succeed at that task and is getting reported.  You have been warned.

Update:

So didn’t have to call tech support after all, as Susan popped on line to mention that THERE IS A PATCH because evidently there is a KNOWN ISSUE with the original install file.  God forbid the game makers actually update the install file that’s being sold or put up an ANNOUNCEMENT that, hey, here’s a problem, here’s the thing you download to fix it.  Geez.  But no tech support people will die today courtesy of her own prior experience and sacrifice dealing with this foolishness.

8 thoughts on “Gaming Rage

  1. Nothing is simple anymore. Except Big Fish Games, which I love. But most of those are Hidden Object/Adventure games with no fast-paced fighting. I remember the simple days of the first NES systems. My oldest son started on the very first one (now he’s such a gaming nerd at 30 years old). Wow, I’m old.

  2. AGREED!!!!!! If it’s not an instant download/play thing, I’m pretty much not interested (and @Lauralynn – even BFG is a PITA because you have to download their extra hub thingy and then download your game and then have it install on your machine. Geeze. I love Hidden Object games but that’s driving me mad, too, these days…)

    I play Diablo 3 (also a Blizzard invention – the creators of WoW, which I refuse to play and D3 is looking suspiciously like WoW anyway, so…)

    Share gaming rage, sista!!! Good luck on your rampage. May you find all the loot and slay all the monsters!

    1. Hmm. There used to be a time when I had to download the hub thing on BFG, but I haven’t had to do that in a LONG time. I just download the game into the game manager and that’s all.

  3. Super Mario Brothers… I happened to mention them today actually. Because I played “Donkey Kong” wayyy before it turned into Mario Brothers. There was just Mario, and a wannabe King Kong, and a girl that needed saving. Played it with a cartridge slotted into the keyboard of an Atari (this was somewhere around 1980 I guess – granny telling stories about the olden days…). Anyway if it’s harder than downloading a free app I’m not even going to bother with games.

  4. I really don’t miss the fact that unless your NES was basically straight out of the box, it’d crap out on you and start flashing solid colors at you every ten minutes and you’d have to take the cartridge out and blow on it (not sure that ever did anything, but everybody did it) and pump it up and down and keep hitting that on switch over and over.

    A lot of console games now are still pretty much as simple as turning it on and popping them in (or downloading them, and that takes less time than installing a typical cd-rom game would have 15 years ago). And a lot of them are really amazing. 🙂

    1. Can’t say I ever had that experience with my NES. I still have the original one from the 80s and it still plays just fine. But either way, yeah a lot of the games are totally amazing these days. But it wouldn’t kill the manufacturers to write clear instructions to navigate their asinine DRM hoops.

      1. Oh man, lucky! All my friends and I had the same problem, all the time. Maybe because young boys are disgusting and dirty. 🙂 But yeah, agreed about all the drm silliness.

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